


When All Kindness Has Gone

by sapphose



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Dysfunctional Family, Exile, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-17 11:02:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29099229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphose/pseuds/sapphose
Summary: Garak tries to come to terms with exile.
Relationships: Elim Garak & Mila Garak
Comments: 2
Kudos: 26





	When All Kindness Has Gone

**Author's Note:**

> This is a cut scene from "This Nasty Habit of Surviving" in my Terok Nor AU series, but I think will work without that context.

The hours slipped by without Garak's notice.

He reread the message, searching for the punchline, the lie, the hidden message in the code. There was nothing, nothing but the laconic missive itself, the brutality of that word _exile_ stark on the screen.

He sent messages and made calls that all went unanswered in damning silence. Former colleagues, a select discrete few who owed him a favor, who he thought could be compelled to connect him with Tain- no response, message undelivered.

He tried to enter Order archives, to confirm the exile order and its provenance, only to find his access codes rescinded. Despite sneaking through every back door he knew how to find, forging identification traces where he needed to, he found himself locked out at every turn.

Garak was not, by nature, an optimist. He believed in accepting a situation and then figuring out what needed to be done. But this... he had given his life to Cardassia, to Tain. He could not be so callously thrown aside. There had to be a next step, a greater plan, some purpose he was missing.

There had to be.

It was Mila, ultimately, who broke the wall of frigid silence. She answered after Garak had lost count of how many times he had tried to reach her.

“You never could do as you’re told,” she said by way of greeting. Sometimes, such admonitions were fond, but right now there was nothing but worry in her eyes.

“Talk to him, Mila.” He had meant it to sound forceful, assured, but it came out as petulant.

“I did. You know better than anyone that traitors are usually executed.”

As if exile was preferable to death.

“I never betrayed Cardassia,” Garak insisted.

“It was never about Cardassia, Elim.” She sounded tired. “It was always about Tain. I knew your idealism would get you into trouble.”

Garak felt a childish urge to argue that it wasn’t his fault. He had been raised for the union, molded and shaped for it, fed with stories about sacrifice and the greater good and his duty. He had tortured and murdered and lied and given up any chance at another life because he could be of use to Cardassia.

“You should have let him kill me.” Anything was better than a life with no purpose, no home.

“Don’t be dramatic.”

“What do you expect me to do?” he demanded.

“Survive. What else?”

Garak’s purpose had been Cardassia; Mila’s had always been to stay alive. She had lasted through a childhood of poverty and hunger, had outlived any other servant Tain had ever tried to keep.

“Mila…” The words dried up in Garak’s throat.

“There’s no use, Elim.” A hand raised into the view of the screen, reached out, as if she was going to touch him across the lightyears, as she hadn’t since he was a small child. “You can’t call again.”

He knew.

“Mother.”

If he didn’t know when he would see her again, he had to say it.

Mila only shook her head, sadly, and the screen went black.

Exile.

Garak could hack files and turn others’ secrets against them and send encrypted messages to every agent he knew, and it would not change Tain’s mind. Tain, who would not see him or speak with him. Tain, who had exiled him.

Garak sat bonelessly in his chair, staring at the blank monitor as he tried to understand it.

Elim Garak, exile.


End file.
